From a Friend of McHenry County Blog comes this explanation of the Scott Presler campaign training event today:
The event was moved from Minooka to Shorewood due to a medical emergency in the family of the owners of the original venue.
A late call was made to move, and the owner of Scooter’s Roadhouse agreed (even though he was supposed to go out and get breakfast with his family).
The attendees were grateful.
There were at least 150 people there.
Over 400 signed up.
The weather was frigid.
Going there, it was in the single digits the whole way.
“Kick Adam Kinzinger out of office” was said a few times with high intensity.
The organizer of the event, Scott Presler, is a dog walker, political activist, and trash collector.
He goes to cities with a crew and picks up trash.
He claims to have once organized 200 volunteers to pick up 12 tons of trash in 12 hours (either in Baltimore or Boston — can’t remember).
He knocked on doors in 2016 to get Trump elected.
He talked about the “power of one.”
By that he meant the potential for one person to make a difference.
He also brought up the “power of love” and said if the GOP can convey compassion better, they should have no problem getting elected.
He used Virginia as an example of what the GOP should not do.
For 12 years, the GOP stagnated while the Democrats got hundreds of thousands of voters registered.
The talk was full of jokes.
He made a joke that the one good thing about COVID is it keeps Biden 6 feet away from… everybody.
Presler seemed happy, optimistic, energetic, and funny.
He engaged with the whole crowd and got them to participate.
He used volunteers for examples.
He talked about different places to register voters: Home Depot, Chick Fil A, churches, synagogues, parks, beaches, shopping centers, and gun shops to name a few.
Like most activist training, he emphasized getting non-registered people to register and to get the registered people to polls, but *not* wasting time on people who disagree.
Just move on.
Don’t waste time.
He talked about not being judgmental: these days it’s not uncommon to find young Trump supporters with tattoos and piercings.
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
He gave certain tips about body language and appropriate attire for knocking on doors.
He showed certain questions that could be asked which would probably indicate if a person is more liberal or conservative.
He also said conservatives should get better at social media.
Use pictures.
Become a storyteller.
Take selfies with your newfound political allies.
What can you do?
Register voters.
Push them to vote.
Make spreadsheets.
What else can you do?
Letters to voters, letters to the editor, murals, community service (good place to network), join your local GOP (be a PC [Precinct Committeema].
Presler is also working on election integrity, particularly in the GOP trifecta states, and in swing states with GOP legislatures.
Call your state legislators and ask them what they are doing about election integrity?
Subtopics of this include banning Dominion software, switching to all paper ballots, and more.
It’s a long-strategy that has 2024 in mind.
He probably made about 100 references to his hair, but the people were enjoying it.
For snacks and drinks, Dunkin Donuts was brought in.
I saw people there from McHenry, Will, Cook, Kane, Kendall, Grundy, and LaSalle County and am sure there were people from many other counties.
Presler hopes to get rid of Kinzinger, Cheney, and Murkowski among others.
No individual candidates running against Kinzinger spoke, although James Marter was in attendance.
There will be another event at Scooter’s Roadhouse on February 24th.
Darren Bailey is supposed to make some kind of announcement at 7 p.m
I imagine it will be that he is going to run for governor.
Bailey achieved some fame last year when he sued JB Pritzker over COVID restrictions.
There has been speculation he might run for governor in 2022.
The event ended with a group picture and cheer to remove Kinzinger, and a call to action to knock on doors.
Presler does not work for the GOP and says he has his own data for door knocking.
He brought up data a few times and mentioned how Obama’s team was really good with that – something the GOP should try to emulate.
Attendees were invited to stick around, socialize, exchange numbers, sign up to knock on doors, and take pictures with Pressler.
They were encouraged to go knock on doors immediately, but since the new venue was not in the 16th district (according to many attendees) and due to the weather, I’m not sure how many people ended up knocking on doors today.
However, it’s undeniable that the people there today are fired up and ready to remove Kinzinger.
I, like many readers of McHenry County Blog, believe the biggest obstacle to removing Kinzinger won’t be finding enough anti-Kinzinger voters, but trying to consolidate that energy to a viable alternative candidate.
In that sense, GOP voters are no closer to figuring out who that person will be than before today.
Fortunately, the primary isn’t taking place for a long time.
I don’t see a mask in sight.
A strange bird, but an experienced refuse remover, so he should be quite ok to take out the Kinzinger trash.
Cal, this is a minor detail, but I believe the place is called Skooter’s Roadhouse, not Scooter’s Roadhouse.
It is mentioned twice in this article.
Also he’s a dog walker.
Let’s not forget that.
Dude looks like a lady
Flatback male spine.
Look at this:
https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=presler#:~:text=Presler%20Name%20Meaning%20German%20and%20Jewish%20%28Ashkenazic%29%3A%20variant,of%20American%20Family%20Names%20%C2%A92013%2C%20Oxford%20University%20Press
I should have went to Scott’s training session.
Instead of ClickHole.com’s “Learn To Loot, Smash Skulls And Scream The Right Way” educational protest safety simulator.
A complete waste of time.
Did Kinzinger’s NYC and LA patrons put this simpleton up?
150 people and no masks.
Let’s watch the Covid numbers rise.
Only completely brainwashed morons wear masks. Only a fool thinks that anything named Covid is even real let alone some kind of a threat. Wake up foolish moron!
I bet you wear a mask when you go to the store Cindy so I guess your a moron HAHAHAHAHA you FREAK
John, I think Presler is backing Catalina Lauf now.
There’s an open-war between the Turning Point grifter types trying to sneakily assimilate Trump supporters back into the pre-Trump neocon mold of the GOP and the more authentic right wing authoritarians.
Jack Lombardi is going off on Lauf on his twitter. Check it out.
I’m happy this is happening.
People who don’t pay attention are going to be confused but this was something bound to happen.
I’ll try to explain the Struggle for Power that you see happening in the GOP for those who do not understand.
-You have people like Kinzinger or Romney. They’re not too interested in Trump; they’re interested in voting the “right” way (however that may be defined).
-You have people like Lauf who use the language of Trump but are wishy-washy; people suspect they are plants of the establishment.
-Then you have people like Michelle Malkin (not that she’s a politician, but I use her as an example because of her ideology).
A lot of people thought it was just two groups:
Trumpists vs old guard.
Some would argue it still is, but with extra steps and decoys.
They’d argue the first and second group are the same group.
It’s also possible to see it as three distinct groups like I mentioned above and will now rephrase slightly:
-People who distance themselves from Trump.
-People who praise Trump and appropriate phrases like “America First” but vote like neocons. This group
and the former group will clash. (It will be up for debate how much is authentic vs performative.)
-An authentic “new right” or populist right like we’ve seen emerging all over the world, especially since 2015 with leaders like Orban, Trump, Modi, and Duda.
You could further break these groups down into sub-groups (on a spectrum you could argue Romney and Collins are pretty far apart since Romney is conservative and Collins is moderate; we could say the third group has a strongly Christian faction and an anti-Judeo-Christian faction [which we could further break down into a secular faction and a Pagan faction), but the typology listed above is probably sufficient to explain what’s happening in terms of the Struggle for Power in the GOP that we are seeing on full display.